Concerning the mode of life of the original Hebrews, and the good reasons for our preferring their divine Scriptures to the doctrines of our ancestors
It is time now to sketch the way of life of the Hebrews and of their philosophy and piety, which we have preferred above all our ancestral traditions. For since we have established that we made our departure from the false theology of all Greeks and barbarians alike not by irrational but by judicious and sober reasoning, it is time now to settle the second question, giving the reason for our taking up the Hebrew writings instead. That our taking what is useful from barbarians brings no reproach on us, we shall show at the proper place, by demonstrating that the Greeks, and even their celebrated philosophers, have procured from barbarians all their philosophical learning, as well as what is otherwise common and useful for civic needs. But that no good such as has been provided for us by the Hebrews has ever been found at all among any of the nations will become plain as follows.
Recapitulation of the theology of other nations, and its evil effects on their mode of life
All other people, from the first formation of life onward through time, attending only to the senses of the body, because they had understood nothing more about the soul within them and thought that nothing exists among things beyond what is seen, assigned what is noble, useful, and the only good to the pleasure of the body. And supposing this alone to be worth pursuing, as the only good, agreeable and sweet, and sufficient for the enjoyment of a happy life, they considered and deified it as the greatest of gods. They did not desire even life itself unless it shared in bodily pleasure; they embraced living not for the sake of living but for the sake of living pleasantly, and prayed that this alone, as the only good, might be present to their own children. Hence some, supposing the sun, moon, and stars to be the suppliers of life in the flesh, and being somehow also struck with awe at the sight of their light, proclaimed them the first gods, declaring them the sole causes of all things. Others honored again with the title of gods the fruits of the earth, the moist, dry, and hot substance, and the other parts of the world through which their bodies, nourished and fattened, pursued the life and pleasure of the flesh together. Others, long before these, barefacedly (literally, with bare and uncovered head) deified their own passions and their mistress pleasure, love and desire and Aphrodite, saying that these rule even the gods. Others deified, both while still living and after death, the men who had become suppliers and inventors of pleasures for them, certain tyrants and potentates, because of the comforts they had received from them. Others, becoming the playthings of wicked spirits and demons, increased still more the passionate part of their soul, procuring pleasures from these too through their customary worship. Others, putting up with none of these, introduced atheism as far better than such theology. And others, more shameless than all of these, declared that the philosophic and life blessed three times over is nothing other than the pleasant life, defining pleasure as the end of goods. In this way the whole human race, enslaved to pleasure as to a bitter and most cruel mistress, a god, or rather a shameful and licentious demon, was mired in every kind of misery. For their females, as the holy apostle says, "exchanged the natural use of the female for that which is against nature; and likewise the males also, leaving the natural use of the female, were inflamed in their desire for one another, males with males working shamelessness, and receiving in themselves the due recompense of their error." In this way Greeks and barbarians, wise and ignorant, fallen on the ground and on their bellies, worshiped pleasure as a god; casting themselves down prone like reptiles, they thought her an invincible and inexorable god and loved her. In songs and hymns, at the festivals of the gods and at public spectacles, they were initiated into and celebrated the orgies and indecent rites of shameful and licentious pleasure alone; so that this, if anything, has rightly been abolished among us. "For the beginning of sexual immorality is the devising of idols." So the theology of the other nations had taken on, to put it briefly, so great a variety, all depending on one principle, unclean and foul pleasure, but branching out, like a many-necked and many-headed hydra, into many and various divisions and sections. Since, then, they had put forward so great an error, it was fitting that, as they made use of pleasure as a god and an evil demon, evils were heaped on evils for them, as they defiled their whole life with madness for women and corruptions of males, marriages with mothers and unions with daughters, and surpassed even wild and beastly nature in excess of wickedness. Such, then, was the way of the ancient nations and of their false theology, as has been shown earlier through the Greek historians and philosophers we have collected.
Exposition of the character of the Hebrews, and their modes of thought concerning the Maker and Framer of the Universe
If, then, you have taken in the life of the ancients, consider now in your mind the sons of the Hebrews alone, among so many, going the opposite way. For they were the first and only people of all who, from the very first foundation of life, devoted their minds to rational contemplation and gave pious attention to the study of the nature of the universe. First they learned the elements of bodies, earth, water, air, and fire, of which this universe is composed; and they reasoned that the sun, moon, and stars are not gods but works of God, realizing that the nature of bodily substance is not only irrational but also lifeless, inasmuch as it is fluid and perishable. Then they reasoned that it is not possible to ascribe to chance the cause of the ordering of the whole world, so well and wisely fitted together and full of living creatures both rational and irrational, nor to suppose that the productive principle of living things is lifeless, nor that the maker of rational beings is irrational. And since not even a building of wood and stone could ever put itself together, nor a garment be completed without a weaver, nor cities and constitutions exist without laws and the ordering of rulers, nor a ship without a pilot, nor the smallest tool of a craft come into being except through a craftsman, nor a ship ever reach a good harbor without a good pilot, so neither would the nature of the universal elements, being lifeless and irrational, ever of itself lay hold of reason and life without the supreme wisdom of God. Having thought through these and similar things, the fathers of Hebrew piety, from the greatness and beauty of created things, with purified mind and clear-sighted eyes of the soul, worshiped God the maker of all.
Their opinions concerning the immortality of the soul, and the substance of the body
Then, perceiving that they themselves are no small part of the whole, they considered one part of themselves precious (this being the true man, understood as the soul), and the other to hold the place of a covering for it; and this is the body. Having divided things in this way, they devoted all their care and effort to the life of the inner man. They reasoned that this was dear to God the maker of all, who granted human nature to rule over everything on earth not by bodily strength but by virtue of soul. For of beings, some are lifeless, like stones and wood; some share in vital power, like the plants of the earth; some have been allotted sensation and the impulse of imagination, like the irrational animals; but all these are subjected to the service of the human race alone, not compelled by bodily strength and might, but by reason and virtue of soul, by which they understood that the privilege of ruling and reigning over all things on earth had been granted from above by the cause of all. Setting out from this, they resolved to value the body and bodily pleasures no more than the other creatures on earth do, but devoted their efforts only to the ruling part in them, as akin to the ruler of all, and to the rational and intelligent part of the soul, divine and capable of knowledge, as bearing the likeness of God over all. Then, considering that there is no good other than God, the supplier of all goods, they declared that the end of all happiness is knowledge of him and friendship with him, since he alone holds the cause of life itself, of soul and body, and of what is necessary for them. To him, then, they dedicated themselves wholly, body and soul together, hanging their whole life on him, and thinking it right to attend to him alone and to nothing else that is seen. So, having shown themselves both lovers of God and loved by God, they were declared true worshipers and priests of the most high God, and were thought worthy to be called a chosen race and a royal priesthood of God and a holy nation, leaving the seed of this true piety to their descendants as well. Do you think, then, that we have been reasonable in preferring these to the Greek accounts, and in accepting the Hebrews' narratives about pious men rather than those about the gods of the Phoenicians and Egyptians and their blasphemous absurdities concerning the gods?
How for their piety they were rewarded with the recorded theophanies and oracles
See, further, how far in God-loving virtue the men described are said to have advanced. The divine, having accepted these men for the piety and philosophy of their life in general and for their worship of it, thought them worthy also of more divine oracles, theophanies, and angelic visions. It corrected what was lacking in mortal nature by counsels on what to do, and revealed to them the knowledge of doctrines and teachings worthy of God, so that their minds were enlightened no longer by reasonings or guesses but by the shining of truth itself; so that, now inspired by God, they saw and understood things to come as if they were present and prophesied what would happen to the human race as a whole. Such are the much-praised and truly God-loving oracles that contain the virtue of the Hebrews, which we have preferred to the myths and nonsense of the Greeks and of our ancestors; for the latter contained the most shameful things about gods, the former the pious teachings of God-loving men.
That apart from Judaism before the time of Moses they were illustrious for piety
These things were known among the ancestors of the Jews long before, ages before Moses and the Jewish race came into being. For it is good to make this distinction too: that Judaism did not yet exist then, but the men described were Hebrews in name and in way of life, while Jews neither yet existed nor were so called. You may learn the difference between Hebrews and Jews thus: the latter took their name from Judah, from whose tribe the kingdom of the Jews was established long afterward; the former from Eber (he was a forefather of Abraham). The sacred writings teach that the Hebrews were earlier than the Jews. And as for the way of piety, Moses first began the legislation for the Jews, handing down a certain day of Sabbath and its strictest observance as a reminder of leisure for the sacred words, a distinction between animals that may and may not be eaten, yearly feasts, certain purifications of the body, and a long course of other rites performed in a more divine sense according to certain symbols. But the Hebrews, being earlier than Moses in time and knowing nothing of the whole legislation given through Moses, practiced a free and unconstrained way of piety, adorned with a life according to nature, so that through the soul's complete freedom from passion they needed no laws to rule them, and having received true knowledge of the doctrines about God. With these things said in this way, it is time to proceed to the written evidence.
That Moses himself has recorded in his own writings the lives of those Hebrews who lived before his time
Moses, then, the great theologian, a Hebrew of Hebrews if anyone was, and well acquainted with his ancestral traditions, at the beginning of the sacred laws handed down in indelible records the lives of the Hebrew ancestors and the good things of which they were thought worthy by God, and again the ways and punishments of others who were godless and impious. He considered that this lesson would be necessary for those who were to be trained in his laws, for avoiding the ways of the wicked and for encouragement to the life of the pious. And besides, they ought not to be unaware that already, even before his written laws, many of the ancestors had been adorned with the virtue of piety by right reasoning; and they, being called friends of God and prophets, obtained eternal remembrance with him; and those to whom he was giving the laws were not of a different race from them. So all the more must they, born descendants of God-loving and righteous men, show themselves zealous for the piety of their ancestors, and hasten to obtain from God the same things as their ancestors, and not grow numb or shrink back, giving up the hope of good things as though they were impossible. For these things were possible, having been fully achieved by their own ancestors. Their images he handed down to those being trained in divine things, recounting the lives of the ancients and portraying the special virtue of each one as in painted images.
That we used good judgment and wise consideration in accepting their history; a brief survey, from the authors quoted, of the lives of those beloved of God, both before the flood and those who continued afterward until the generation of Moses
Nothing prevents us from running briefly through their history too. Before the flood, then, as Moses' own writing records (for I think we must examine the ancestral traditions of the Hebrews from no other source than from their own, since we learned the Egyptian ones from Egyptians and the Phoenician from their own people, as again the Greek ones from those eminent among them, and the philosophers' from the philosophers, not from those without experience of philosophy; and from where else would it be fitting to inquire into medicine than from those who know it? So, consistently, I think we must accept the Hebrews' matters too from the oracles among the Hebrews, and not from anywhere else). As their account holds, then, from the beginning before the flood, from the first birth of humans and in the following generations, there were some God-loving men and a number of righteous ones. Of these one "hoped to call on the name of the Lord God." This shows that he acknowledged no one but the maker of all things as Master and God of the universe. For he was persuaded that God not only arranged the whole well and in order by his creative power, but also, like a master of a great city, is lord of the whole, managing and governing it as its householder, being at once Lord and King and God. Taking to heart, first of all, the notion and the name of him as Lord and God, the God-loving man described, in place of all possessions, titles, and wealth, or rather in place of every good, "hoped to call on the name of the Lord God," having provided this for himself as a treasure of goods for soul and body alike. For this reason he is recorded among the Hebrews as the first to be called a true man. He was named Enosh, which means "true man," an apt name. For they say that no other ought to be considered and named a true man than one who has attained the knowledge of God and piety, one who is truly a knower and pious at once. For the Scripture of the Hebrews teaches us to call those who are not such, who differ in no way from irrational beasts, cast down prone on belly and pleasure, wild beasts rather than men, since it is accustomed to use names in their proper sense. That is why it is accustomed to call such people sometimes wolves and dogs, sometimes swine wallowing in and delighting in filth, and again reptiles and snakes, according to the many forms of wickedness. And if ever it must indicate the common and ordinary man and the race itself, it again uses an appropriate and fitting name and signifies every man by the name of Adam, intimating that this is the proper and fitting name for the ancestor and forefather of all people, meaning "earth-born" when translated into the Greek language. Enosh, at any rate, is recorded among the Hebrews as the first of the God-loving, since he first hoped to call on the name of the Lord God, showing what in the soul is truly rational and knowing and skilled in piety toward the divine. Of these, the first would show true knowledge of God, the second hope in the God who has been come to know. For not to neglect nor to put in second place the matters of divine knowledge, but always and continually to hope to call on the name of the Lord God, on the one hand as servants on a master, on the other as on a gracious and good father, this would be the end blessed three times over of all. Such, then, is the one presented among the Hebrews as the first and true man: not the earth-born, called Adam, who fell from his better lot through transgression of God's command, but the very first of the God-loving, who hoped to call on the name of the Lord God. Having judged with sober reasoning, then, we too have loved to imitate such a man, and have accepted the account of the word as profitable and most beneficial to us, making it our prayer, after the image of the one described, to call with firm and good hope on the name of the maker and master of all. But after him another "pleased the Lord, and was not found," as Moses says, "because God translated him," on account of his consummate perfection in virtue. For the truly wise man is hard to find. This would be the man perfect in God, who has been translated from the haunts of the many. For one who is not such, pursuing marketplaces and law courts, retail trade and commerce and the great crowd, pushed and pushing, is swallowed up in the midst of the depth of vice; but one who has been taken by God and translated from things here to there, though hidden and not to be found by men, having become a friend of God, has been found by God. The Hebrews like to name this man Enoch, and the name would mean "the grace of God." So we have thought it blessed to imitate his life too, as a good image. Third after these, another righteous man appeared, Noah, who is attested as "righteous in his generation." The proofs of his righteousness would be these. A great drought and darkness of unspeakable wickedness had seized the whole human race; and the giants, spoken of by everyone, were carrying out by godless and impious undertakings the battles against God celebrated to this day. Already, too, those who were the cause of their birth, whether they were of some higher lot or of mortal nature, or however they were constituted, having begun the superfluous teaching among humans, are said to have handed down to life the devices of sorcery and other mischievous magic, so that the whole human race came under one sentence of judgment before God. And when all were about to be destroyed by a single nod, this one man now described was found alone righteous in his generation, together with his household. As all things on earth perished in the flood, and the earth itself was purged of its former evils by a sudden inundation of waters, the God-loving man, with his sons and their wives, was preserved by God in a most extraordinary way as a living seed for the life that followed. He too would be an archetypal image, living and animate, having provided for those born from him an example of a God-loving way of life. Such were those before the flood. And after it there were others again distinguished for piety, whose memory the sacred oracles preserve. One of them is proclaimed a priest of the most high God, called in the Hebrew language "king of righteousness." None of all these had any account of bodily circumcision, nor of the Jewish precepts of Moses; so it is not right to call them Jews, nor indeed Greeks, since they did not believe in many gods like the Greeks or the other nations. They would more properly be called Hebrews, either from Eber or rather from the meaning of the name. For they are interpreted as "people who pass over," having set out on the passage from things here to the contemplation of the God of the universe. For they are recorded as having directed the right course of virtue by natural reasonings and unwritten laws, and as having passed over beyond the pleasures of the flesh to the all-wise and God-fearing life. Among all these let us count also the famous founder of the whole nation, Abraham, to whom the oracles bear witness of righteousness, not again the righteousness from the law of Moses, since that did not yet exist (Moses appeared in the seventh generation after Abraham); but he too is proclaimed righteous and pious, if anyone was, like those described above. Scripture says, then: "And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." The divine oracle foretells that he will be the father of many nations, and says expressly that in him all the nations of the earth and all the tribes will be blessed, plainly prophesying what is now being fulfilled in our time. But that Abraham, after his perfection in righteousness, achieved not through the law of Moses but through faith, and after the recorded theophanies, when he was about in his old age to become the father of a legitimate son, was the first of all to be circumcised in body according to an oracle, handing this down to be performed also by those born of him; whether as a visible sign of the great number of his children, or so that the children might have an ancestral mark, whether they lived in imitation of their ancestors or fell short of their virtue, or for whatever other reasons, which there is no leisure now to inquire into. Such, then, is he too, set forth for imitation. After him Isaac is shown to be the successor of his father's knowledge and love of God, having received this as the finest of all his father's inheritances, blessed three times over. The divine oracles say that he was united to one wife and had one occasion of begetting children; and having become father of twins by it, he is said to have limited his intercourse with his wife to this, from exceeding self-control. Here let Jacob, also called Israel, be brought in for you, a man who came to have two names according to the different progress in his virtues. When he was being trained in practical habits and ways of life and was undergoing the labors for piety, his name was Jacob, which, translated into the Greek language, means "one who practices discipline" and "athlete"; But when at last he has won the prizes of victory over his adversaries and is crowned, and already enjoys the goods of contemplation, then the God who speaks to him changes his name too, thinking him worthy also of the vision of God, and bestowing through the name the rewards of more divine prizes and honors. The oracle, then, says to him, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name, because you have prevailed with God and are mighty with men," the name Israel indicating the man of vision and contemplation; for the changed name means "a man who sees God." Such, then, was he too, from whom the twelve-tribed race of the Jewish nation came into being. Countless things could be said about the life of these men and their philosophical endurance and discipline, some to be considered literally, others interpreted allegorically by their hidden sense. These have been discussed by others, and by us too in our work on the many children of the ancient men. Such, then, were these too. Besides them I can mention another to you, a man named Job, whom the sacred oracles testify was "a blameless, true, righteous, God-fearing man, keeping away from every evil thing"; he, though in no way belonging to the Jewish race, is attested for all the achievements of piety. Jacob's sons, loving their fathers' knowledge and worship of God, advanced the fame of the Hebrews of old to great glory, so that they even came to hold the rule of all Egypt. For Joseph, first crowned with the prizes of self-control and then receiving the government of the Egyptians, displayed the God-loving way of the Hebrews, which we too have made it our prayer to imitate; he became a slave through the plot of his own family, and the slave of an Egyptian man. I pass over everything else that fell to his good fortune in beauty, strength of body, and handsomeness, even though the oracles record that he surpassed all in bloom of beauty. But as for his soul, how could anyone record it who undertook to give praise worthy of the man's virtue? By nature, it is said, the mark of a free man was present in him, and the nobility of his character bloomed in his face; but he had been especially trained in the distinguished adornments of piety, so that his soul shone with self-control and justice, prudence and courage, and long before these with knowledge and reverence of the God of all, which his parents are said to have laid down in his soul from his swaddling clothes. When his master's wife went mad for him, and tried to drag his young body into licentious and amorous relations, first attempting to deceive him with words, then pleading with entreaties, and finally daring to lay hands on him more violently, using shameless and brazen embraces, the hero, calling to mind the pious teaching of his fathers and showing himself God-fearing and truly a Hebrew in deeds and words alike, shook off the shameful and licentious woman, getting free with a stronger hand; and fleeing as from a terrible and raging beast, he found safety in flight. And then he reasons with himself with sober thought and says, "If my master, because of me, knows nothing of what is in his house, and has given all that is in it into my hands, how then shall I do this great evil thing and sin before God?" For this, the God of the universe crowned him as a victor with the prizes of virtue and gave him kingship and government over his masters and over Egypt itself. Yet he too, a Hebrew of Hebrews, not a Jew, since the Jewish things did not yet exist, has been received among those who love God most and are blessed three times over. After the Hebrews mentioned, when the race of their descendants grew into a great population, and the Jewish nation formed from them was already increasing and multiplying daily, the pious way of life of their God-loving ancestors of long ago gradually weakened and was blunted among them, while the influence of their stay among the Egyptians so prevailed over the multitude described that they forgot their ancestral virtue and their lives were turned to the ways of the Egyptians, so that they seemed to differ in no way from Egyptians in character. Then, when they had become such, the God of their ancestors sent them Moses as leader and lawgiver, confirming the promises made through oracles to their ancestors; and then, having performed through him the recorded wonders and extraordinary divine signs, he set before them a law suited to the character of the hearers; who, not emulating their ancestral virtue through dullness, being diseased and passionate in their souls, received a constitution suited to them; Moses ordered some things openly and plainly, and hinted at others through hidden meanings, prescribing them to keep and observe symbols and shadows, but not the naked truth. And so the Jewish polity, beginning from about this time with Moses, lasted until the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, in accordance with the words of their own prophets; for this too was the prophecy of Moses himself and of the prophets after him, that the ordinances and decrees of Moses would not fail before those of Christ appeared, that is, those of the new covenant proclaimed to all the nations through our Savior; and these came to their end just as was foretold. But since we have gone through briefly the life of the Hebrews before Moses and have set out the character of their piety, it is time also to examine their doctrinal teaching from the writing of Moses and the prophets after him.
Of the doctrinal theories of the Hebrews
First of all, then, that wonderful theologian and lawgiver himself, laying down in his own writing a constitution befitting piety for the Jewish nation, did not think he should use the common and well-worn preambles; but before every law that commands what should be done and forbids what should not, and before the public and civil ordinances about contracts between people, he thought he should make the ancestral theology the beginning of his teaching, considering no other learning suited to laws befitting piety than the theology that had come down to him from his ancestors. He begins, therefore, from God, according to the ancestral tradition of the theology of the Hebrew ancestors; not as the Egyptians and Phoenicians and the other nations liked, who spread the revered name among a multitude, considering as visible gods the lights in heaven, and as invisible and unseen ones either those who departed from among humans or the earthly and aerial demons, as was refuted by us earlier. Rather, having made the beginning of his whole account from the cause of all things, the maker of things invisible and visible, he teaches that this one is the lawgiver of the constitution of the universe, setting him up as king of the world, as of one great city. So he teaches from the beginning that this one should be regarded as the author and lord not only of the laws to be ordained by him for humans a little later, but also of those in the nature of the universe.
Of general Providence, and the constitution and construction of the world
For he presents him as king and lawgiver of the whole world: by his nod and power the substance of all things came to be, and by his laws and limits again the whole age is steered in way and order. For by the word and law of God, first of all, heaven was made firm, and the heavy and solid earth, contrary to its own nature, wonderfully suspended upon the finer elements; by divine word and law night and day run their alternating course; by the word and law of God the sun himself and the moon and the choir of the other stars accomplish their fitting course in becoming order; by the law of the King of all the changes of solstices, the alterations of seasons, the cycles of the year, and the yearly seasons are fulfilled in the all-harmonious concord of the universe; by God's law winter gives way to spring, and this to the seasons next to it; the depths of the sea, surging in winter floods, are shut up by divine law in their own seas, so that they do not dare to overstep the bounds of the sacred laws; and the dry substance, the earth, watered by rains and snows supplied again in measure by divine law, sends up countless kinds of plants and animals. In a word, the all-mother nature of the universe, enslaved to God's command, yields to divine laws and to the will of God the ruler of all. For so great an ordering did not come about at random, nor by chance, nor by a spontaneous and irrational motion, nor is this great and most beautiful work of art the product of a causeless nature; but it is the work of the all-wise architect of the universe and is steered by his words and sacred laws. Beginning from this, the prophet, having set out the laws concerning the nature of the universe before the legislation for humans, commanded first of all to attend to God the King of all and not to neglect his laws, since even the sun, heaven and the world, the earth and all things on earth, and whatever are considered works of nature, serve his commands and ordinances, his sacred laws and words. So all the more must the human race, being no small part of the whole, consistently attend to the divine ordinances, and not fall short of the individual elements. For in the beginning, he says, the one who said, "Let the earth bring forth herbage of grass, sowing seed according to its kind, and the fruit tree bearing fruit," gave a law to the earth; and the earth, showing its obedience to the law at the word, has not neglected the divine ordinance even to this day. So too the watery substance: when God said, "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls, and birds flying along the firmament of heaven," it rendered the work at the word, and is still seen to this day showing its obedience to the law. And if the sun and moon and stars, the divine law having appointed them too to render their proper courses and to be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years, do not neglect the legislation, what escape into pardon would still remain for you if you despise the divine laws? By this preliminary teaching the wonderful man won us over and rightly made us zealous for his knowledge and worship of God, since we have been able to find nothing like this among the theologians of the nations mentioned earlier. After the first teaching about God he passes to the second doctrine, both natural and philosophical. After the knowledge of God and of the ordering of the universe, he proceeds in order to what is second by nature too: this is the doctrine of the nature of man, since after knowledge of God one must know oneself. So he next teaches what man is, what leads him to knowledge and worship of God, and what man's life is in the primary sense. Dividing the account into soul and body, he defines the true man as being in the soul, which shares in an intelligent, bodiless, and rational substance, as made according to the image of God; the earthy body is the covering of the soul; and to these he adds a third, the breath of life, a uniting power that joins what was taken from the earth to what was made according to the image of God. And he relates that the first dwelling of the man described was in the paradise of God, blessed three times over and, full of immortal and eternal goods; but that, subject like the others at the beginning of the universe to a law of God, he was deprived of that life longed for three times over through carelessness and transgression of the divine command. These things Moses teaches as philosophy in the preface of the sacred laws, all but proclaiming beforehand that we must not neglect our own dignity and the likeness to the divine that we received, from which immortality of soul too has been allotted to us. For it is not lawful that a king's image be destroyed. The archetypal and true image of the God of the universe is his Word, who is wisdom itself and life itself and light and truth, and whatever good and beautiful thing one might conceive; and the human mind is an image of the image, which is why man is acknowledged to have been made according to the image of God. He thought it necessary for those who were to give heed to sacred laws to be taught these things beforehand: to remember what in them was taken from the earth and will be dissolved again into earth, and what in us is better and like God, and how they ought to treat each of these; not to insult and act impiously against the man made in the image of God, nor to defile himself with shameful and lawless deeds, but always to carry a longing for that original dwelling and life, blessed three times over, and to hasten to return there, praying to attain the original life and dignity, blessed three times over; and even now to prepare from here for the journey there, since it is not otherwise possible for the profane and unpurified to set foot in those holy places from which even the first man fell through carelessness, having despised a divine command. To these the hierophant adds another most essential doctrine, teaching us not to doubt that there is present with each person an evil demon lying in wait, envious, hating good, and from the beginning plotting against human salvation. He calls him dragon and serpent, black and at home in darkness, full of venom and wickedness; and he says that out of envy of our divine life he tries even now to trip up and drag down each of those who devote themselves to God; and that by his deceit the ancestors of our race fell from their more divine lot. So we must always be watchful against the wicked tricks of the one described. But why anticipate these things, when we must now at last go through each of the points described from the writings themselves? Let us begin first from God, calling on him first of all as our helper through our Savior.
The opinions of the Hebrews concerning God as the First Cause of the Universe
Their account, then, presents the beginning of theology starting from the creative and formative power of the universe, not by syllogisms or plausible arguments, but in a more dogmatic and didactic way, speaking by inspiration of the Holy Spirit; inspired by whom Moses began his theology thus: "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." Then he says, "God said, Let there be light, and there was light." And again, "God said, Let there be a firmament, and it was so." And again, "God said, Let the earth bring forth herbage of grass, sowing seed according to kind and according to likeness, and every fruit tree bearing fruit whose seed is in it, according to kind, on the earth; and it was so." And again, "God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, to give light upon the earth, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years; and it was so." And again, "God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to kind, and all the birds of heaven according to kind; and it was so." And again, "Let the earth bring forth quadrupeds and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth according to kind; and it was so." In these words, when Scripture says "God said," it presents the divine nod and God's willing that things come to be in this way; we need not think that he spoke with voice and syllables. Summing up the whole account, it says: "This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth, in the day that God made the heaven and the earth and all things in them." Such is the theology of the Hebrews, teaching that all things were constituted by the creative Word of God. Then it teaches that the whole world was not left by its maker desolate, like an orphan by its father, but is forever governed by God's providence, so that God is not only the creator and maker of the universe but also its preserver and governor, king and ruler, presiding through the ages over the sun itself, the moon, the stars, and the whole heaven and world, overseeing all things with a great eye and divine power, present to all things in heaven and on earth, and ordering and governing all things in the world. Just so, of course, the prophets after these, uttering inspired words consistent with them, sometimes cried out, speaking from the very person of God: "I am a God near at hand, says the Lord, and not a God far off. If a man does something in secret, shall I not know it? Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord." And sometimes, speaking of God thus: "Who measured the water with his hand, and heaven with a span, and all the earth with a handful? Who set the mountains in a balance and the valleys on scales? Who has known the mind of the Lord, and who became his counselor?" And again: "He who set up the heaven like a vault, and stretched it out like a tent to dwell in." And again: "Lift up your eyes on high and see who has displayed all these things." And next: "The Lord, the Lord God, who made the heaven and fixed it, who made firm the earth and what is in it, and gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk on it: I am the Lord God." And next: "I stretched out the heaven alone and made firm the earth; I am the Lord God, there is none besides me." And again: "Thus you shall say to them: The gods who did not make the heaven and the earth, let them perish from the face of the earth and from under heaven. The Lord, who made the earth by his strength, set up the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heaven, and brought up clouds from the end of the earth; he made lightnings for rain, and brought out winds from his treasuries. Every man has become foolish, without knowledge." And again: "Where shall I go from your Spirit, and from your face where shall I hide? If I go up into heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Hades, you are present. If I take up my wings at dawn and settle at the farthest parts of the sea, even there your hand will guide me." These and similar words belong to the theologians after Moses, who were themselves Hebrews too, speaking of God in harmony with their earliest ancestors. But hear the God-loving men, blessed three times over, before Moses, the first Hebrews, and first of all Abraham himself, who is proclaimed forefather of the whole Jewish nation. "And Abraham said to the king of Sodom, I will stretch out my hand to God Most High, who created the heaven and the earth." And before Abraham, Melchizedek, priest of God Most High, is brought in blessing Abraham in these words: "Blessed be Abraham by God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hands; and blessed be God, who created the heaven and the earth." Further, the word brings in Abraham speaking thus to his servant: "Put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth." And he adds: "The Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, who took me from my father's house and from the land in which I was born." Besides all these, in the theophany to Moses himself, when Moses asked what he should consider God to be, the oracle says: "I am He Who Is; thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, He Who Is has sent me to you." Let these be set out from the countless passages of Hebrew theology. Is it worth comparing with them the theologies of the wise Greeks: some declaring that there is no God at all; others that the stars are gods, which they say are red-hot lumps of metal fixed in the heaven like nails and plates; others that God is a craftsmanlike fire proceeding methodically; some that the world is governed not by God's providence but by some irrational nature; others that only heavenly things are governed by God, not those on earth; and again that the world is uncreated and did not come into being at all from God, but exists spontaneously and by chance; and others that the constitution of the universe came from atoms, fine bodies without soul or reason? So much, briefly, from the oracles of the Hebrews about the God of the universe. Next we must look at what the Hebrews have taught philosophically, after the God of the universe, about the principle of things that have come into being.
On the theological doctrine of the Second Cause
Thales of Miletus declared that the first principle of all things is water, Anaximenes air, Heraclitus fire, Pythagoras numbers, Epicurus together with Democritus atomic bodies, Empedocles the four elements. Let us look, then, at the oracles among the Hebrews too. After the beginningless and unbegotten being of the God of the universe, which is unmixed and beyond all comprehension, they introduce a second being and divine power, the beginning of all things that have come into being, which subsisted first and was begotten from the first cause, calling it Word and Wisdom and Power of God. Job is the first to teach this, saying: "But wisdom, where was it found? And what is the place of understanding? A mortal does not know its way, nor was it found among men, but we have heard its fame. The Lord established its way, and he knows its place." And David somewhere in the Psalms, calling Wisdom by another name, says, "By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made firm," thus praising the Word of God, the maker of all things. And his son Solomon personifies Wisdom herself, saying: "I, Wisdom, have made counsel my dwelling, and I have called on knowledge and thought. By me kings reign, and princes write justice." And again: "The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth, before the depths came to be, before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills he begets me. When he prepared the heaven I was present with him, and when he set firm the fountains of the earth under heaven, I was with him, fitting all together. I was she in whom he rejoiced day by day, and I was glad before him at every time, when he rejoiced at having completed the world." This is what Solomon says in Proverbs. And these words too are spoken somewhere in his person: "What Wisdom is and how she came to be I will declare, and I will not hide mysteries from you, but I will trace her out from the beginning of her origin." To which he adds next: "For she is a spirit intelligent, holy, only-begotten, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, undefiled, all-powerful, overseeing all, and passing through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, and most subtle. For Wisdom is more mobile than any motion, and pervades and penetrates all things because of her purity. For she is a vapor of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled enters into her. For she is a radiance of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the activity of God, and an image of his goodness. She reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things well." And the divine Scripture introduces this divine Word in various ways as sent by the Father for the salvation of humans. It records that he showed himself to Abraham, to Moses, and to the other God-loving prophets, and taught them many things by oracles and foretold the future, whenever it mentions that God and Lord was seen and came into converse with the prophets. That he would come to the knowledge of all people, sent by the greater as savior of the sick and physician of souls, it prophesies thus: "He sent his Word and healed them, and rescued them from their corruptions." And again elsewhere it says, "His Word shall run swiftly." Hence the gospel teaching too, renewing the prophetic and ancestral doctrine, makes the theology clear in this way: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." Fittingly, then, by the same Spirit Moses too, the all-wise, beginning his account of the world's creation, says that God made the heaven and the earth in the beginning already spoken of; and he introduces God conversing with him, as with his own firstborn Word, at the making of man, where he writes: "And God said, Let us make man according to our image and according to likeness." The psalmist too hinted at this when, speaking of the first cause, he says, "He spoke, and they were begotten; he commanded, and they were created," plainly implying the arrangement and command of the first cause to the second, as of father to son. For it is surely altogether plain that everyone who says something says it to another, and one who commands commands another than himself. And again Moses expressly mentions both of two Lords, that is, Father and Son, relating the punishment of the impious thus: "And the Lord rained from the Lord on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire." In agreement with these, David too sang: "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." And going on, he hinted at his hidden generation, unspeakable to all: "From the womb before the morning star I begot you." So that you may not think I am inventing these things, I shall present to you as interpreter of the meaning in Scripture a Hebrew man, accurate in his ancestral traditions and having learned the doctrine from teachers, if Philo seems such to you. Listen, then, to him too, how he interprets the divine words:
Philo concerning the Second Cause
"Why does he say, as if of another God, 'In the image of God I made man,' and not 'in my own'? This has been uttered very finely and wisely. For nothing mortal could be made in the likeness of the most high Father of the universe, but only of the second God, who is his Word. For the rational imprint in the human soul had to be stamped by the divine Word, since the God who is before the Word is better than every rational nature; and it was not lawful for anything begotten to be made like the one who is above the Word, established in the best and a special form." Let this be set down from the first book of Philo's Questions and Answers. The same author, in the first book On Husbandry, also names this firstborn Word of his Son of God, in this way: "All these things God, as shepherd and king, leads according to justice and law, setting over them his right Word and firstborn Son, who will take over the care of this sacred flock like a viceroy of a great king." And in the second book again the same author writes this, word for word: "If anyone, then, wishes to escape the difficulties in what has been discussed, let him say boldly that nothing material is strong enough to be able to bear the burden of the world; but the eternal Word of the everlasting God is the strongest and most secure support of the universe. He, stretched from the middle to the ends and from the extremes to the middle, runs the long, unconquerable course of nature, gathering all the parts together and binding them fast. For the Father who begot him made him an unbreakable bond of the universe. Fittingly, then, the whole earth will not be dissolved by all the water that its hollows have received, nor fire quenched by air, nor conversely air set ablaze by fire, since the divine Word sets himself as a boundary, like a vowel among voiceless elements, so that the whole may sound in harmony as in written music, mediating and arbitrating the threats of opposites by persuasive reconciliation." So Philo. And Aristobulus too, another wise man of the Hebrews, who flourished under the rule of the Ptolemies, confirms the doctrine as ancestral, addressing his interpretation of the sacred laws to Ptolemy himself, in which he says this:
Aristobulus on the same
"The same thing could be transferred to wisdom; for all light comes from her. That is why some of those of the Peripatetic school have said that she holds the place of a lamp; for those who follow her constantly will be calm throughout their whole life. But one of our ancestors, Solomon, said more clearly and better that she existed before heaven and earth; and this agrees with what has been said." Such things and the like the sons of the Hebrews have taught on this subject. Would not this be the most God-befitting of doctrines, which ascribes the beginning of the constitution of the universe to the rational and all-wise power of God, or rather to Wisdom itself and the very Word of God, rather than to lifeless and irrational elements? Such, then, is the Hebrews' teaching on the first principle of the universe. Let us examine also what they teach about the constitution of rational beings, which come after the first principle.
On the constitution of rational creatures
After the beginningless and unbegotten being of God the King of all, they teach a beginning begotten from no other source than the Father, being firstborn and co-worker of the Father's will, and made in his likeness. This, they teach, holds the first place among all things that came into being after it; which is why they are accustomed to call it the image of God, the power of God, the wisdom of God, the Word of God, and indeed the commander-in-chief of the host of the Lord and the angel of great counsel. The intelligent and rational powers that come after this beginning cannot be expressed by human nature, because of their number and their differences of kind, except so far as one can approach them by examples from the analogy of visible things: the sun, the moon, the stars, and heaven itself, which embraces all things within itself. "For there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars," says the divine apostle; for star differs from star in glory. In this way, then, we must conceive of the world among bodiless and intelligent beings: the inexpressible and infinitely great power of the God of the universe embraces all things at once, and second after the Father is the creative and illuminating power of the divine Word. That is why the Hebrews like to call him true light and sun of righteousness. And third, after the second being, in the place of the moon, is set the Holy Spirit, which they also number in the first and royal dignity and honor of the principle of the universe, he too having been appointed by the maker of the universe as principle of the things that came into being after these, I mean those that are lower and need his supply. But this Spirit, holding the third rank, supplies to those below the better powers within it, and receives in turn from another, higher and better, whom we said is second to the supreme and unbegotten nature of God the King of all; from whom the God the Word himself is also supplied, and drawing, as from an ever-flowing spring that wells up divinity, he gives a share of the radiance of his own light, ungrudgingly and to all at once, to the Holy Spirit himself, who is nearest and closest to him of all, and to the intelligent and divine powers after him. And the unbegotten principle of the universe, being the source of all goods and the cause of divinity, life, light, and all virtue, and being first of the first and principle of principles, or rather beyond principle and first and every expressible and comprehensible thought, shares everything that it embraces in its ineffable powers with its first offspring alone, as alone able to contain and receive the abundance of the Father's goods, which is unattainable and uncontainable by the others. But partial goods he grants to those worthy of them part by part, through the ministry and mediation of the second, as each can attain; and of these, the perfect and supremely holy have been given to the one who is third from him, but is ruler and leader of those that follow, and who conveys through the Son what comes from the Father. Hence all the theologians of the Hebrews, after the God over all and after his firstborn Wisdom, ascribe divinity to the third and holy power, calling it Holy Spirit, by whom they too were enlightened when inspired. Next after heaven, sun, and moon, they say, star differs from star in glory. For mortal nature it is not possible to find the number of the stars; but the oracles of the Hebrews say that God the King of all is not ignorant of the multitudes of the host of heaven and their names. Therefore it is said among them: "He who numbers the multitudes of stars and calls them all by names." So too, after the first of the stars conceived among bodiless powers, distinguished in power and substance of intelligent light, there is a great difference, inconceivable to us, and countless tribes and kinds, though not to the maker of the universe. So one of the theologians, presenting their number as comprehensible to God alone, says: "Ten thousand times ten thousand ministered to him, and thousands of thousands stood before him," showing by the number that they are comprehensible to God, and by the quantity that they are infinite to us; which is why we are accustomed to call things many and infinite "myriads," by way of hyperbole. Another prophet, describing their substance, speaks of the maker of all things thus: "Lord my God, how greatly you are magnified! You have clothed yourself with praise and majesty, putting on light as a garment, stretching out the heaven like a skin; who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire." Do not think that the beings described share in the substance of our mortal and earthy fire, or of the winds that come from the irrational nature of air. Rather, just as they name God himself, who is bodiless, immaterial, and pure mind, or rather beyond mind and beyond all reason in nature, more figuratively spirit and fire and light, and by other names suited to mortal ears, so the divine words call the intelligent and rational beings angels and archangels, spirits and divine powers and heavenly hosts, principalities and authorities, thrones and dominions, as if tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of stars and lights; and they say that the sun of righteousness rules and presides over them all, and the Holy Spirit, his yoke-fellow. But all things together, with the Son himself and the Holy Spirit, intelligent and rational living beings, together with those that appear in heaven, heaven itself and all that it holds embraced within it, the divine and prophetic Scripture bids give the fitting hymn and proper acknowledgment of deity to the God over all alone, who through all and in all is King of all and ruler of all and cause of the universe, as creator, maker, guardian, and savior of all, saying: "Praise God from the heavens, praise him in the highest; praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his powers; praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you stars and light; praise him, you heavens of heavens, and the waters above the heavens; let them praise the name of the Lord. For he spoke, and they were begotten; he commanded, and they were created. He established them forever and to the age of ages; he set a decree, and it shall not pass away." Such are the doctrines of the Hebrews too, which we have preferred to the polytheistic and demonic error of the Greeks. We know the divine powers to be servants and ministers of God the King of all and honor them as is fitting, but we confess one God alone and worship him alone, whom heaven itself and all things in heaven and beyond heaven have been taught to worship, hymn, and acknowledge as God. For the only-begotten of God himself, the firstborn of the universe, the principle of all things, bids us regard his Father alone as true God and worship him alone.
On the adverse powers
It follows to examine what the oracles of the Hebrews hand down about the opposing power. The divine powers set over the whole world at the Father's nod, the ministering spirits sent out for service for the sake of those who are to inherit the kingdom, the holy angels and archangels of God, and the whole intelligent being that ministers good things, being full of light and the servant of all the goods given by God to humans: these, they say, form the bodyguard of God the King of all; and then, like the stars in heaven, they circle around the sun of righteousness and the Holy Spirit his yoke-fellow, and enjoy the supply of light from them; which is why they are fittingly compared to the lights in heaven. But the being that turned aside from these, deprived through its own wickedness of the chorus of the better ones, and taking darkness instead of light, Scripture names, in contrast to the first, with names suited to the depravity of its character. The one, at any rate, who began the fall and became for himself and others the cause of apostasy from the better ones, having fallen wholly to the ground from the piety of diviner things, and become for himself the maker of wickedness, venom, and impiety, and having become the creator of darkness and irrationality by his voluntary withdrawal from the light, Scripture is accustomed to call dragon and serpent, black and creeping, begetter of deadly venom, a wild beast, a man-eating lion, and again the basilisk among reptiles. The divine words say that the occasion of his falling away was madness of mind and derangement of understanding, describing his fall and his insanity together thus: "How has the morning star fallen from heaven, he who rose at dawn! He who sent out to all the nations has been crushed to the earth. But you said in your mind, I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven, I will be like the Most High." And again: "Thus says the Lord: Because your heart was lifted up, and you said, I am a god, I have dwelt in the dwelling of God." And again: "You were a seal of likeness and a crown of beauty; you were in the delight of the paradise of God; you were bound about with every precious stone," and so on. To which he adds: "You were on the holy mountain of God; you were born in the midst of fiery stones; you were blameless in your days from the day you were created, until iniquities were found in you. Your heart was lifted up at your beauty; your understanding was corrupted with your beauty; for the multitude of your sins I cast you to the earth." Through these words we have plainly learned of the former dwelling of the one described with the diviner powers, and of his falling away from the better ones through his own boastfulness and fighting against God. And there is a countless other race under him, guilty of similar offenses, which, having fallen from the lot of the pious because of its impiety, exchanged its former luminous and diviner clothing, its honor in the royal courts, and its dwelling among blessed and angelic choirs, for the place fitting for the impious, by the just judgment and sentence of the great God: to dwell in Tartarus, which the divine words call the abyss, and in darkness, not the darkness we know, but that indicated by the divine oracles. A small and slight remnant of these, left about the earth and the air below the moon for the training of the athletes of piety, has become a joint cause of polytheistic error among humans, which differs in no way from atheism. The divine Scripture has given these too fitting names: more plainly, when it calls them evil spirits and demons, principalities and authorities, world-rulers, and spiritual forces of wickedness; symbolically, when it urges the God-loving man not to fear the mass of hostile demons, saying, "You shall tread on the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample the lion and the dragon." A sign of their enmity to God is their wish to be proclaimed gods themselves, to snatch for themselves the honors due to God, and to try by divinations and oracles, as by charms and bait, to lure the easily led, drawing them away from looking up to the God of the universe and dragging them down into the all-destroying abyss of impious and godless superstition. That is why the Hebrews alone, from the beginning of the ages, took pains to flee headlong from their deceits. They teach expressly that all the gods of the nations are demons. But now, God willing, through the gospel teaching of our Savior all the nations from every part of the world, freed from demonic bonds, hymn God, whom we have learned to be alone Savior and King and God of the universe.
On the nature of man
Here again the Phoenicians' and Egyptians' account of the origin of living things introduced a spontaneous generation of all creatures on earth, both animals and humans, describing one and the same nature as having come forth from the earth by chance, and supposing that the irrational soul and being differ in no way from the rational. The passages of their writers quoted earlier showed this. But again the sons of the Hebrews have rightly been preferred by us, having understood the first constitution of humans most finely, wisely, and truly, since they say that of what is in us one part is divine and immortal, fleshless and bodiless in nature, and this is the true man, made according to the image and likeness of God; and that he is the work of God, not of chance nor of spontaneous nature, but of the cause of the universe himself, who willed by divine judgment that things on earth too should not be without a share of intelligent and rational being, so that the fitting hymn might be sent up to him through all, heavenly and ethereal beings and the rational beings on earth capable of perceiving his divinity. The oracles of the Hebrews, then, contain this: "And God said, Let us make man according to our image and according to likeness; and God made man, according to the image of God he made him." And again: "And God took dust from the earth and formed man, and breathed into his face a breath of life, and man became a living soul." And the Hebrew Philo interprets these too, adding the following to the words of his already set out:
Philo on the soul
"But the others, saying that our mind is a portion of the ethereal nature, connected man by kinship with the ether. The great Moses, however, likened the form of the rational soul to none of the things that have come into being, but said that it is a genuine coin of that divine and invisible Spirit, marked and stamped with the seal of God, whose imprint is the eternal [Word]. 'For God breathed,' he says, 'into his face a breath of life, and man became a living soul'; so that the one who receives must be made in the likeness of the one who sends. That is why man is said to have been made according to the image of God, not according to the image of any created thing. It followed, then, that since the human soul was made in the likeness of the archetypal Word of the cause, the body too, raised upright, lifted its eyes toward the purest part of the universe, heaven." So he says. Rightly, then, the divine Scripture says that man did not come into being like the other living creatures. Some came forth from the earth at a single command of God the King of all, and others flew up from the watery substance again at his nod; but only the most God-beloved of the living creatures on earth, we ourselves, were made according to the image and likeness of God as to the soul. In view of this, man is seen to be by nature ruling and royal, alone of creatures on earth rational, creative, capable of judgment and of legislation, and able to grasp arts and sciences; for the soul in man alone is an intelligent and rational being, in which the other creatures on earth have no share. That is why the others serve and hold the place of servants to man, while he, as master and leader, enslaves and subjects creatures much stronger in bodily might, but lesser through their lack of intelligent being. This one, then, they say, was constituted by God himself according to the image and likeness of God, with a certain distinguishing excellence. That is why he is able to form conceptions of God, to grasp wisdom, justice, and every virtue, and to count the courses of sun, moon, and stars and the cycles of days and hours, because of his kinship with things above, which man alone of mortals displays. But what has been molded around this from outside is of a different kind of substance and earth-born; yet it too is the work of God, taken from the earth and returning to it. Therefore one should care for it as much as a master burdened with an irrational animal would, leading it gently and feeding it like a servant well fitted for the service of human life; but the master within, being noble and akin to God by nature, should be honored in a manner befitting the free, since he has been honored by the cause of all. The oracles say, then, that the King of all, having adorned the first human nature with divine powers and likeness to God, allotted to him, as fitting to his gifts, his first dwelling place of life in a paradise of good things, enrolling him among divine choirs. And the Father, being all-good, gave him these things at the beginning; but man by his own free choice fell from the better things and exchanged them for the mortal place through neglect of the divine command. That is why it is most fitting to lay hold of piety first of all, to correct the first wrong by a second, better course, and to hasten toward the return to and restoration of what is our own. For the end of human nature is not here on earth, turning to corruption and destruction, but there, from where the first man fell. Therefore we must recover again the purity and godlikeness of the intelligent being within us, to which all people who care for piety and virtue must eagerly strive to ascend with all their strength. Such are the philosophical teachings about human nature among the Hebrews from of old, before the Greeks even came into human existence. These, as people of yesterday and quite young, sprung up from the earth, set out to filch the barbarians' teachings and did not keep their hands off those of the Hebrews, as the discussion will show very soon as it proceeds. But since it was a distinctive Hebrew doctrine that the God over all is to be considered the one maker of all things, including the very substance underlying bodies, which the Greeks call matter; and since countless barbarians and Greeks alike have opposed this, some declaring that matter is the source of evil and unbegotten, others that it is in its own nature without quality and without shape, but that by the power of God it has received the world with its qualities: we must show that the opinion of the Hebrews holds far the better position, standing by the problem with rational demonstration and refuting the opposite account by right reasoning. I shall set out the words of those before us who have examined the doctrine closely, and first of Dionysius, who in the first of his exercises Against Sabellius writes this on the subject:
That matter is not uncreated
"Nor are they pious who make matter, as unbegotten, subject to God for the ordering of the world, saying that, being passive and changeable, it yields to the alterations made by God. For let them explain how both likeness and unlikeness belong to God and to matter. For one must conceive something superior to both, which it is not lawful even to think of concerning God. For unbegottenness, said alike of both and yet conceived as other besides each, where did it come from in them? For if God is the unbegotten itself, and unbegottenness is, so to speak, his being, matter could not be unbegotten; for matter and God are not the same. But if each is what it is, matter and God, and unbegottenness belongs to both, clearly it is something other than each, and older and higher than both. And the difference of their opposite states utterly overturns their coexisting, or rather the matter's existing by itself as something other than them. For let them say the reason why, when both are unbegotten, God is impassible, unchangeable, unmoved, active, while matter is the opposite, passive, changeable, unstable, transformed. And how did they fit and come together? Did God, adapting himself to the nature of matter, work it as a craftsman? But it is absurd that God, like humans, should work gold and stone and labor with his hands at all the other crafts by which materials can be shaped and molded. But if he gave matter such quality as he himself wished according to his own wisdom, stamping on it the many-formed and all-various shape and imprint of his own creation, this account is both reverent and true, and moreover it confirms that God is the unbegotten foundation of all things. For to being unbegotten he attached also the manner of being. There is much to say against these people too, but it is not our present purpose; compared with the most godless polytheists, these are more reverent." So much from Dionysius. Hear also from Origen:
On the same subject from Origen's Commentaries on Genesis
"If anyone is troubled because of human craftsmen and cannot accept that God makes the things that exist without unbegotten matter lying ready, since a sculptor cannot make his work without bronze, nor a carpenter without wood, nor a builder without stones, we must ask him about the power of God: whether, when God wills to bring into being whatever he wishes, his will being neither at a loss nor weak, he cannot bring into being what he wishes. For by the same reasoning by which he brings into being, by his ineffable power and wisdom, the qualities that did not exist, as he wills, for the ordering of the universe (as all who acknowledge providence agree in their own reasoning), by this reasoning his will is able to make come into being also the substance, as much as he needs. For we shall raise this difficulty against those who will not have it so: does it not follow for them that God was fortunate in finding the substance unbegotten, and that if the unbegotten had not lain ready for him, he would have been able to make no work at all, but would have remained no creator, no father, no benefactor, not good, nor anything else reasonably said of God? And where did the measuring of the underlying substance to such an amount come from, so as to suffice for the existence of so great a world? For a kind of providence older than God will necessarily have supplied the matter to God, taking care that the art within him should not be idle for want of a substance with which he could work and adorn the world's great beauty. And where did it get its capacity to receive every quality God wishes, unless God himself made it for himself of such amount and kind as he wished to have? Accepting by hypothesis, then, that matter is unbegotten, we shall say this to those who hold it: if, without providence supplying the substance to God, it came to be such, then had providence been in existence, what more would it have done than chance? And if he himself, matter not existing, had wished to construct it, what more would his wisdom and divinity have done than what existed from the unbegotten? For if the same thing is found that would have been made by providence and that came about without providence, why should we not also set aside the creator and craftsman of the world? For just as it is absurd to say of the world, so skillfully constructed, that it became such without a wise craftsman, so it is equally irrational to say that matter, of such amount and kind and so yielding to God's craftsmanlike Word, existed unbegotten. To those who compare that no craftsman makes anything without matter, it must be said that they compare unlike things. For providence supplies every craftsman with matter coming from a prior art, either divine or human. This will suffice for the present against those who, because it is said, 'And the earth was invisible and unformed,' think that bodily nature is unbegotten." So much from him too. And the Hebrew Philo too, in his work on providence, sets out this about matter:
Philo on the same
"About the quantity of the substance, if indeed it really came into being, this must be said. God aimed, for the creation of the world, at a most sufficient amount of matter, so that there should be neither lack nor excess. For it would be absurd that particular craftsmen, whenever they make something, especially costly things, should weigh out the sufficient amount of materials, while the one who discovered numbers and measures and the equalities in them should take no thought for what was enough. I shall say boldly, then, that the world needed neither less nor more substance for its construction, since otherwise it would not have become perfect, nor complete in all its parts; but, well made, it was completed from a perfect substance. For it is proper to one all-wise in art, before beginning any construction, to see the sufficient matter. A man, even if he surpasses others in knowledge, being unable entirely to escape the error native to mortals, might perhaps be deceived about the quantity of matter when he practiced his craft, at one time adding as to something too little, at another taking away as from something too much; but he who is a fountain of sciences was not going to supply anything lacking or excessive, using measures all worked out to marvelous exactness and praiseworthy. And one who wishes to talk nonsense otherwise might as well blame the works of all craftsmen too, as though they would have attained a better construction by some addition to or subtraction from their materials. But it is the work of sophistry to invent arguments, and of wisdom to search out each thing in nature." Let Philo's words stand thus. And Maximus, a man not undistinguished in the school of Christ, has also written a treatise of his own, On Matter. From it I think I shall usefully quote a moderate amount for an exact examination of the problem.
That matter is not uncreated, nor the cause of evil
"That it is impossible for two unbegotten things to exist together I think you too are not unaware, even though you seem particularly to have anticipated this and added it to the argument, that one must necessarily say one of two things: either that God is separate from matter, or again that he is inseparable from it. If, then, anyone wishes to say that he is united with it, he will say that the unbegotten is one; for each of these will be a part of the other, and being parts of one another they will not be two unbegotten things; just as, though man is divided into different parts, we do not say that many begotten things came into being, but (as reason requires) that man is one begotten thing of many parts made by God. So, if God is not separate from matter, one must say that the unbegotten is one. But if anyone says they are separate, there must be something between both, which shows their separation. For it is impossible for one thing to be examined as standing apart from another unless there is something else in respect of which the separation of each takes place; and this does not stop here alone, but extends to very many. For the argument we stated about two unbegotten things must likewise proceed of necessity if three unbegotten things are granted. For about these too I would ask whether they are separate from each other, or again each is united to its neighbor. For if anyone wishes to say they are united, he will hear the same argument as the first; and if again separate, he will not escape the necessary existence of what separates them." "But if someone says there is also a third account suitable to be given of the unbegotten things, namely that God is neither separate from matter nor again united to it as a part, but that God is in matter as in a place, or matter in God, let him hear the consequence: that if we say matter is God's place, we must necessarily say that he is contained and circumscribed by matter. Moreover, he must necessarily be carried about in disorder like matter, and not stand or remain by himself, since that in which he is is carried now one way, now another. Besides this, one must say that God was among worse things. For if matter was once without order, and he ordered it, choosing to turn it to the better, there was a time when God was among disordered things. I might fairly ask this question too: whether God filled matter, or was in some part of matter. If anyone wishes to say God was in some part of matter, he calls him far smaller than matter, if a part of it contained him wholly. But if he says he was in all matter, he must explain how he made it. For one must say either that there was some contraction of God, upon which he made that from which he withdrew, or that he made himself together with matter, having no place to withdraw to. And if anyone says that matter is in God, we must likewise examine whether it is as though he were divided from himself, just as kinds of animals exist in air, the air being divided and parted to receive what comes to be in it, or as in a place, that is, as water in earth. For if we say 'as in air,' we must say that God is divisible; but if 'as water in earth,' and matter was disordered and unadorned, and moreover contained evils, we must say that God is the place of disordered things and of evils. This seems to me not reverent, but rather dangerous. For you want matter to exist so that you need not call God the maker of evils, and in choosing to avoid this you say that he is a receptacle of evils." "If you had said that you supposed matter to be unbegotten from the things that have come into being, I would have said much about it to prove that it cannot be unbegotten. But since you said that the origin of evils is the reason for this supposition, I think I should therefore proceed to examine this. For once the account of how evils exist has been made plain, and that it is not possible to call God blameless for evils by supposing matter beside him, such a supposition seems to me to be done away with. You say, then, that matter without qualities coexists with God, from which he made the generation of this world? —So it seems to me. Then if matter was without qualities, and the world came into being from God, and the qualities are in the world, God has become the maker of the qualities. —That is so. And since I heard you saying before that it is impossible for anything to come into being from what is not, answer my question: do you think that the qualities of the world did not come from underlying qualities? —I do. —And that they are something other than the substances? —That is so. If, then, God made the qualities neither from underlying qualities nor from the substances, since they are not substances, one must say that they came into being from God out of what is not. So you seemed to me to say needlessly that it is impossible to hold that anything came into being from what is not by God. But let the account of this stand thus. For among us too we see people making some things from what is not, even if they seem especially to make them in something; let us take the example of architects. For they make cities not from cities, and likewise temples not from temples. And if you think that, because substances underlie these, they make them from what exists, you err in your reasoning. For it is not the substance that makes the city or the temples, but the art applied to the substance; and the art does not come from some underlying art in the substances, but comes into them from what was not in them. You seem likely to meet the argument thus: that the craftsman makes the art in the substance from the art he has. To this it seems good to me to say that not even in man does it come from some underlying art. For art cannot be given as existing by itself; for it belongs to the accidents and to the things that receive their being only when they come to be in a substance. For man will exist even without architecture, but it will not exist unless man first exists. Hence one must say that the arts naturally come into being in humans from what was not. If, then, we have shown this to be so in the case of humans, how is it not fitting to say that God can make not only qualities but also substances from what is not? For by its appearing possible for something to come into being from what is not, it is shown that the same holds for substances. But since you long to inquire into the origin of evils, I shall come to the account of these, and I wish to ask you briefly: do evils seem to you to be substances, or qualities of substances? —It seems right to me to call them qualities of substances. —And matter was without qualities and without shape? —So I stated at the outset of the discussion. —Then if evils are qualities of substances, and matter was without qualities, and you said God is the maker of the qualities, God will be the creator of evils too. Since, then, not even so is it possible to call God blameless for evils, it seems to me superfluous to attach matter to him. If you have anything to say to this, begin your reply. —If our inquiry arose from love of contention, I would not ask to define evils a second time; but since we are examining the arguments rather for friendship's sake and for our neighbor's benefit, I ask you to allow us to define them again from the beginning. —I think my purpose and my earnestness in discussion have long been plain to you: that I do not wish to win by plausibly speaking falsehood, but for the truth to be shown with exact examination; and I clearly know that you are of the same mind. So use whatever method you think can find the truth, without any embarrassment. For by using the better you will benefit not only yourself, but surely me too in what I do not know. —You seem to me plainly to hold that evils too are certain substances? —Yes, for I do not see them existing apart from substances. —Since, then, my friend, you say that evils too are substances, we must examine the definition of substance. Do you think substance is a certain bodily structure? —I do. —And bodily structure exists by itself, needing nothing in which it comes to be in order to receive its being? —That is so. —And do evils seem to you to be activities of someone? —So it appears to me. —And activities receive their being when the one acting is present? —That is so. —And if the one acting does not exist, neither will what he does ever exist? —It will not. —Then if substance is a certain bodily structure, and it needs nothing in which it comes to be to receive its being, while evils are activities of someone, and activities need something in which they come to be to receive their being, evils will not be substances. And if evils are substances, and murder is an evil, murder will be a substance; but murder is an activity of someone, so murder is not a substance. But if you mean that the agents are substance, I agree too. For example, a man who is a murderer is a substance insofar as he is a man; but the murder he commits is not a substance, but a work of the substance. We call a man sometimes evil because he murders, and sometimes again good because he does good. And these names are attached to the substance from what happens to it, which it is not itself. For neither is murder the substance, nor again adultery, nor any of the like evils. But just as the grammarian is named from grammar, the orator from rhetoric, and the physician from medicine, though the substance is neither medicine nor rhetoric nor grammar, but takes its name from what happens to it, from which it seems to be so named while being neither of them, so it seems to me that the substance takes its name from what are thought to be evils, while being none of them. And consider likewise, if you imagine in your mind someone else as the cause of evils for humans, that he too, insofar as he works in them and prompts them to do evils, is himself evil from what he does. For he too is called evil for this reason, that he is the maker of evils. But what someone does is not himself, but his activities, from which he takes the name of being called evil. For if we were to say that he is what he does, and he does murders and adulteries and thefts and the like, he himself will be these things. And if he is these, and these have existence when they happen, but when they do not happen they cease to be, and they are done by humans, then humans will be their makers, and the causes both of his being and of his no longer being. But if you say these are his activities, he is evil from what he does, not from what his substance is. And we said that evil is so called from what happens to the substance, which is not the substance, as the physician from medicine. And if each is evil from what he does, and what he does receives a beginning of being, then he too began to be evil, and these evils too began. If so, he will not be evil without beginning, nor will the evils be unbegotten, since we say they are begotten by him. —You seem to me, my friend, to have answered the other man sufficiently; for from what you assumed in the argument you seem to have drawn your conclusions well. For truly, if matter was without qualities, and God is the creator of the qualities, and evils are qualities, God will be the maker of evils. Let this argument be said well against him; but to me it seems false to say that matter is without qualities. For one cannot say of any substance whatever that it is without qualities. Indeed, in the very act of saying it is without qualities, he indicates its quality, describing what kind of thing matter is, which is a form of quality. So, if you like, take up the argument with me from the beginning. For to me matter seems to have qualities without beginning. In this way I also say that evils come from its outflow, so that God may be blameless for evils, and matter the cause of all of them. —I welcome your readiness, my friend, and praise your earnestness in the discussion. For truly every lover of learning ought not simply and at random to assent to what is said, but to examine the arguments exactly. For even if the questioner, by defining against reason, has given the one he is talking with an opening to draw what conclusions he likes, this will not persuade the listener too; but if anything seems possible to say well, he will say it. From this one of two things will follow: either he will hear an answer to what seems to move him and be fully benefited, or he will refute the one he is talking with as not speaking the truth. But you do not seem to me to have said rightly that matter had qualities from the beginning. For if this is so, of what will God be the maker? Whether we say substances, we say that these existed before; or again qualities, that these too existed. Since, then, both substance and qualities existed, it seems to me superfluous to call God a creator. But so that I may not seem to be constructing an argument for myself, answer now when asked: in what way do you say God is a creator? Is it that he changed the substances so that they were no longer what they once were, but others came to be in their place? Or that he kept the substances as they were before, but changed their qualities? —I do not think any change of substances took place, for it seems absurd to me to say this; but I say a change of the qualities took place, in respect of which I call God a creator; just as if one should happen to say that a house came to be from stones, in which case one cannot say that the stones no longer remain stones in substance when they have become a house (for I say the house came to be by the quality of construction, the former quality of the stones plainly having been changed), so it seems to me that God too, the substance remaining, made a certain change of its qualities, by which I say the generation of this world came about from God. —Since, then, you say a change of the qualities was made by God, answer me briefly, as I wish to ask. Tell me whether you too think likewise that evils are qualities of substances? —I do. —And were these qualities in matter from the beginning, or did they have a beginning of being? —I say these qualities coexisted with matter unbegotten. —And do you not say that God made a certain change of the qualities? —I say so. —For the better, or for the worse? —For the better, it seems to me right to say. —Then if evils are qualities of matter, and God changed its qualities for the better, we must ask where evils come from. For the qualities did not remain such as they were by nature. Or, if there were formerly no evil qualities, but you say that from God's changing them the first such qualities arose in matter, God will be the cause of evils, having changed qualities that were not evil into being evil; or do you think that God did not change the evil qualities for the better, but say that only the remaining ones, those that happened to be indifferent, were changed by God for the sake of ordering the world? —That is what I held from the beginning. —How then do you say he left the qualities of bad things as they were? Was he able to remove them too but unwilling, or did he lack the power? If you say he was able but unwilling, you must say that he is the cause of them, since, being able to make evils not exist, he allowed them to remain as they were, especially when he began to fashion matter. For if he had no care at all for matter, he would not be the cause of what he allowed to remain; but since he fashioned part of it and left part as it was, though able to change that too for the better, he seems to me to deserve to incur the blame, having left part of matter evil to the ruin of the part he fashioned. Moreover, it seems to me that the greatest wrong has been done in this respect to the very part of matter he constructed, which now perceives evils. For if one examines things exactly, he will find that matter now suffers worse than in its former disorder. For before it was distinguished, it was not even able to perceive evils; but now each of its parts receives perception of evils. Take the example of man. Before he was formed and became a living creature by the creator's art, he had from nature the advantage of perceiving no evil; but from the time he becomes a man by God's act, he also acquires perception of approaching evil; and what you say came about from God for the benefit of matter is instead found to have come to it for the worse. But if you say that evils have not ceased because God is unable to remove them, you will be saying that God is powerless. And his powerlessness will be either because he is weak by nature, or because he is overcome, enslaved by fear of something stronger. If, then, you dare to say that God is weak by nature, you seem to me to be risking your very salvation; and if that he is overcome by fear of something greater, evils will be greater than God, overcoming the impulse of his will; which seems to me absurd to say of God. For why will not these rather be gods, being able on your account to overcome God, if we call God that which has authority over all things? I want to ask you briefly about matter itself too. Come, tell me whether matter was something simple or composite; for the difference among things that have come into being leads me to such an examination of this account. For if matter was something simple and of one form, while the world is composite and has its constitution from different substances and mixtures * * * for the composite indicates a mixture of certain simple things. But if again you wish to call matter composite, you will certainly say it was composed of certain simple things. And if it was composed of simple things, the simple things existed once by themselves, and when they were put together matter came to be; from which it is shown to be begotten. For if matter is composite, and composite things have their constitution from simple ones, there was once a time when matter was not, that is, before the simple things came together. And if there was once a time when matter was not, while there was never a time when the unbegotten was not, matter will not be unbegotten. From this, then, there will be many unbegotten things. For if God was unbegotten, and also the simple things from which matter was composed, the unbegotten things will not be two only. —Do you think nothing that exists is opposed to itself? —I do. —And is water opposed to fire? —It appears to me to be opposed. —And likewise darkness to light, hot to cold, and moreover wet to dry? —So it seems to me. —Then if nothing that exists is opposed to itself, they will not be one matter, nor indeed from one matter. I want to ask you again an argument like this: do you think parts are not destructive of one another? —I do. —And that fire and water are parts of matter, and likewise the rest? —That is so. —Well then, do you not think water is destructive of fire, light of darkness, and so with all other such things? —I do. —Then if parts are not destructive of one another, they will not be parts of one another; and if they are not parts of one another, they will not belong to one matter. Indeed, they will not even themselves be matter, since nothing that exists is destructive of itself, according to the account of opposition. For nothing is opposed to itself; opposites are naturally opposed to others. For example, white is not opposed to itself, but is said to be opposed to black; and light likewise is shown not to be opposed to itself, but appears so toward darkness; and so with very many other things. If, then, there were one single matter, it would not be opposed to itself. With opposites standing thus, it is shown that there is no such matter." So much from the author already mentioned. Since the discussion has received a sufficient outline, we shall pass to the eighth book of the Preparation for the Gospel and, calling on God as our ally, fill out what remains of the present inquiry.
Connections in Preparation for the Gospel, Book 7
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